1. Technical Field
The invention disclosed broadly relates to data processing systems and more particularly relates to the integration of telephony information in a data processing system.
2. Background Art
Today's competitive business environment has increased the importance of customer service. In many industries, the best company is determined by the service it provides its customers. In many cases, the primary interface the customer has with the company is the telephone. Depending on the business, the customer's calls are serviced by some type of call center. The call center could be a help desk, customer service, telephone sales or claims. A call center can perform both outbound calling and inbound calling operations.
Recent advances in telephony technology have created an opportunity for improvements in call center operations. Until now, call center employees would answer the telephone and, based on information provided by the caller, access an application on a host computer. With these telephony advances, information about an incoming call is now provided by the Central Office to the company's private branch exchanges (PBX). This information about an incoming call can be used to automatically access host applications to obtain a customer profile.
The co-pending U. S. patent application Ser. No. 07/660,763, filed Feb. 25, 1991 by S.K. Gursahaney, et al. entitled "System for Integrating Telephony Data With Data Processing Systems," is assigned to IBM Corporation and incorporated herein by reference. The Gursahaney, et al. application describes a subsystem for providing a programmable interface between a host-based application program and a telephone network, to automatically transfer operands derived from caller identification data from the telephone network, to the host application program. The system provides an easy technique for a call center to customize its call center functions, without requiring the reprogramming of the host computer. This is accomplished by the use of a host access table (HAT) which contains operational commands to perform interfacing functions between the host application program and the telephone network. When the system is executing the commands in the HAT command table to perform call center functions, the system is referred to herein as operating in the operational mode.
What is needed is a method for easily constructing the HAT command table, by a system administrator of a call center, who is not highly skilled in the programming arts.